Totalitarian regimes use repression to maintain lies, which is something they have in common with Harvard, the New York Times, and the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Harvard’s president rose to power after attempting to force a black economist, Roland Fryer, out of the university on the basis of weak and poorly substantiated sexual harassment charges, when her real motivation appeared to be Fryer’s research findings on racial inequality and policing, which were antithetical to Woke ideology. The New York Times fired its oped page editor for doing his job, and AAA canceled a panel after approving it.
These episodes are invariably characterized by activists who use anger and fear to bully cowardly administrators into canceling or firing people. But totalitarian regimes exercise their power most through the manipulation of language, which is less visible, more subtle, and more difficult to stand up to than overt repression. George Orwell in his famous novel about totalitarianism, 1984, characterized totalitarianism as a kind of restriction of language, but it is also an expansion of it. Totalitarians use words so that they have double meanings, implied meanings, and implications that aren’t immediately apparent to the people being manipulated by the language. The manipulation of language is perhaps the most creepy aspect of Woke totalitarianism because the words the Woke are using don’t mean what they appear to mean, and agreeing to use them often suggests agreement with a far more radical agenda than is implied through a straightforward interpretation of the words.
It’s only a matter of time now before Harvard’s president will be forced to step down.
This will go down as one of the worst scandals in its history.
From a member of Harvard’s Honor Council: “I Vote on Plagiarism Cases at Harvard College. Gay’s Getting off Easy.” pic.twitter.com/CZ43GfQQ36
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) December 31, 2023
Agree to use opposite sex pronouns, in order to be polite, and the next thing you know you’re expected to agree that one’s sex is a spectrum, and can be changed. Harvard’s president appears to have risen to her position through her manipulation of language. She even created, or oversaw, the creation of a “Glossary of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DIB) Terms… to serve as a starting point for communication and learning.” In framing the conversation, Gay and her colleagues were attempting to set limits on right and wrong forms of thinking identical to the kinds described by Orwell as “newspeak” and “wrongthink.” The glossary tells Harvard professors and students what it views as the right and wrong ways to think and speak. The ideas are extremely radical, and yet the glossary, like Woke leaders in general, makes clear that they are not up for discussion.
The glossary is a set of demands to be acted upon, not a set of questions to be debated. The Harvard glossary encapsulated much of the Wokeism contained in the New York Times’s firing of its opinion editor and the AAA’s censorship of a discussion of sex. The glossary proposes a racist and sexist hierarchy whereby “victims” are morally superior to “oppressors,” and the two groups are determined by race, sex, and other genetic factors. It designates those people who agree with this hierarchy, despite being subordinate due to their race or sex, as an “ally.” The glossary demonizes as “ableism,” the idea that “being able-bodied is ‘normal,’” even though is normal, at least by its standard definition, which means typical. The glossary promotes the pseudoscientific idea of “cultural appropriation,” which imagines that particular forms of music and food “belong” to certain racial or ethnic group, despite overwhelming evidence that most music and food, including ones designated “ethnic,” are a result of mixing traits and ingredients.
There were warning signs about her going back 22 years. pic.twitter.com/19V1NaN17R
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) December 27, 2023
Dishonestly, the Harvard glossary holds up “accessibility” as a value, which it defines as the “degree to which a product, service, or environment is accessible by as many people as possible,” even though Harvard is one of the most exclusive institutions the world, accepting just 1,666 students out of the over 40,000 who apply. In 2020, as Dean of Arts and Sciences, Gay created a Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage to reduce the imagery of white men on campus and re-name rooms and programs, including ones named after Harvard’s founder himself. Such presentism rests on the irrational idea that values we today view as abhorrent, such as white supremacy, are somehow promoted when long-dead scholars are memorialized in paintings and sculptures. In these ways, Woke totalitarianism advances values that are contrary to the ones it espouses.
It claims to be opposed to racism and sexism and yet promotes them through perpetuating the idea that people, by dint of their race or sex, are either victims or oppressors. It claims to be liberatory and empowering of those individuals designated victims while promoting the idea that they cannot escape their victim identity. And Woke totalitarianism promotes the notion that it is wise and truthful despite promoting such monstrous lies. While it may seem strange that such a deceitful ideology could take root in institutions dedicated to the pursuit of the truth, it makes sense when you consider how much intellectual and ideological effort, and thus wealth, is required to deny reality and promote delusions. As of this year, there are 7,024 full-time Harvard administrators, more than the total number of Harvard undergraduate students. President Gay is just one of them. – Michael Shellenberger
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